We can take nothing in this life with us upon death. That is an unfortunate fact. Yet, many people still ignore it. They place their faith in the riches they have gathered, idolize them, and think that the more they gain the happier they will be. To the contrary, the more wealth we have the more covetous and angry we tend to be, especially if that wealth is idolized. Anyone who idolizes their wealth will do anything to protect it, find security in it, but the outcome is always the same. They die and it remains here. When David sinned by idolizing his wealth, God corrected him by allowing that wealth to be stripped from his life, and it was a heavy burden for David to bear. The moral he discovered was not that wealth is bad. It is okay to store up treasures as long as God is the center of your attention and your life. When they are seen as God's provision, then they are not the god, and they can be used to provide for family, friends, and neighbors, to spread the good news of God's love. Check out this episode to learn more.
Song: Our Great God
Artist: Todd Agnew
Album: Better Questions
Copyright 2007
God is our defender in more ways than we often realize. It is no secret that the world is always at the brink of falling apart. If left to us alone, it and the universe, it could be argued, would have been totally wiped out ages ago. But God never abandoned us. To the contrary, he went to work holding things together, utilizing the omnipotence that only he possesses, to keep the nothingness from whence he made us from consuming us forevermore. Soon we will stand before him and the wicked and sinful, corrupted by the nothingness, will be separated from the righteous, those loyal to Yahweh, to King Jesus, and eternally judged for their evil deeds, with no one to come to their defense. No psalm makes this clearer than Psalm 75.
Often God seems far away in the silence, while his enemies are on the rise. The chaos of nothingness that he conquered in the beginning, bringing about his Creation, is continuously attempting to encroach on that Creation and revert it back to a state of perpetual ruination, egged on by spirits and people who have been swallowed by pride and sin. Sounds like our own times, but it's not. The psalmist in Psalm 74 had the same experience at the cusp of the Exile into Babylon. As Israel was being crushed, God was being mocked, and those faithful to him were being persecuted. Now, his church is in the same position. But we can have hope that he is always there, watching and working behind the scenes to overcome. He calls us to stand firm in the Truth, hold fast to him, and bend the knee to none of the gods of this world.
Asaph was a musician and leader of worship amongst the Israelites during David's reign. He sparked a long line of worship leaders who spanned through the kingdoms of Israel until the Exile and then returned with the people upon their release by the Persians. Having David as a role model, Asaph often looked to Yahweh and was unafraid to ask him hard questions or bring up doubts. Psalm 73 is one of those occasions, where the leader finds himself distraught by the sight of evildoers gaining wealth and preying on the weak. By seeking God in his Temple, Asaph is able to find comfort knowing that God is the final judge and justice will be carried out upon those who relish in destruction of others. Check out this episode of Daily Thoughts to learn more.
A significant scholarly interest among Second Temple Jews was what is known as astral theology, a branch of which is astral prophecy. Because the Book of Revelation is chiefly forward-looking, we often neglect the parts of it that are interpretive of prior events. The book begins with Jesus addressing specific churches in the Greco-Roman world, but from there, John jumps into fantastical-sounding stories that seem out of touch in our world now. However, back then, Jew and Greek alike would have caught that he was using interpretive astral theology, especially in his discussion of - you guessed it - Jesus's birth. The story of the woman, the child, and the dragon is about the birth of the Messiah and provides us some important information. Dr. Michael Heiser in chapter 4 of his Reversing Hermon does a deep dive into that passage of Revelation and shows us that there actually might be an exact date for Jesus's birth, September 11th, 3 B.C.
Pictures of Jesus's birth for a long time have been glamorized, especially in the U.S. When luxury is everywhere, it is easy to reflect that facade in our craftsmanship, but it never changes from being a facade. The world is broken, disgusting, and vile, and the only reason for any good it may contain is God in Christ. Period. Carrie McKean from Christianity Today reminds us that the world is still truly the same place that Jesus entered - gross, smelly, dark, and fallen - but made better by his pervading and everlasting presence. May we always celebrate the God who is willing to get his hands dirty.
Perhaps some of the most perplexing individuals in the Bible, the Magi who sought Jesus after seeing the star which appeared at the time of his birth have sparked much fascination in scholarship and among the general populace. For a long time they were thought to be the Magi of the king's court from the Persian Empire, but their origin is actually much more complex. In this article from Stream.org, Dwight Longenecker dives into the history around the time of Jesus to show that the Magi were actually Arabians with a mix of Jewish and Zoroastrian influence.
